he’d talked about the struggles of bringing up adolescent boys, “that age when your body is like a ship at sea, tossed around violently by raging hormones and all you want to do is reach out and touch someone . . .”
SO TODAY IS FINALLY THE DAY of the game, the reunion with Justin, his high school first crush—though maybe crush is too faint a word for what Justin was. Is? No, was. Definitely was. Not crush, but love. That he can freely admit. Love.
And then tomorrow there’s another meeting of M’s review committee.
The first meeting had been torture. They’d met in one of the older classrooms on campus, which still had a chalkboard and overlooked a barn where agricultural students were looking after cows, pigs, and chickens. Not a place where you’d want to open the windows in nicer weather.
They were a committee of five, four faculty members, one administrator. There was also a student observer with no voting rights, but she had texted the head of the committee five minutes after the start of the meeting with an excuse for why she couldn’t make it. She had to meet her mother at the airport. “Have fun without me!”
The proceedings were not too dissimilar from Medieval notions of justice, when the accused might have to hold a hot iron bar and walk several paces, or retrieve a stone from a vat of boiling water. They began with a brief review of the sordid details of the story. A party off-campus, in a house rented by four English majors. In addition to underage drinking and a joint passed around, there’d been a hot tub, and students in varying states of undress getting in and out of the tub, until somehow, as in a game of musical chairs, only M and the student were left, dressed only in their underwear.
The words “hot tub” were articulated with disgust, as if they were the smoking gun.
Ari recalled the story all too clearly, beginning with the confusion of the young man, who at first enjoyed the attentions of his charismatic mentor, the mildly flirty compliments, the excitement of being treated as an intellectual equal by a real working poet who wore purple sneakers to class and was equally at ease making jokes about William Wordsworth or Kim Kardashian. And when the other students disappeared, the poet moved closer, his arm resting on the ledge of the tub, not a long distance from the bare shoulders of the young man, now feeling dizzy from the alcohol, the hot bubbling water, the excitement of being away from home and doing adult things. And now the arm was slipping off the ledge, resting on bare skin, with a gentle presence that felt friendly, familiar, so why not go along with it? Where was the poet’s other arm? Under the water, traveling, exploring like Magellan, trying to get to the other side of the world, or at least to crawl up the student’s thigh. “You’re very sweet,” said the poet in a soft voice. “You should have more confidence in yourself. You have so much to offer someone.” It almost might have been alright had it stopped there. It was a nice thing to say, right? But then those fingers kept moving. “You’re very sweet,” the poet said once more. “You said that already,” said the student, wishing not to feel that familiar tingle in the groin, the involuntary stiffening. “I don’t think we should . . .” “No?” said the poet. “No,” said the student. “No?” said the poet again, grabbing hold, now stroking. “Or yes?” “No,” said the student. “Just a little longer,” said the poet. “See how good it feels, how good I can make you feel. You’ll like it.”
Who the hell is this treacherous predator, Ari thought. Is he really my husband? Have I helped him in some way, by listening to his stories?
Because in M’s retellings of the various romantic exploits of his past, all his partners had been willing, complicit, fun-loving worshippers of Priapus. Listening to him, Ari had always felt like a sex-shaming prude for feeling both uncomfortable yet curious, sometimes even experiencing a vicarious thrill or two. He was convinced that he in fact needed to work on himself, perhaps force himself to initiate sex more often to catch up—or at least subscribe to more porn online. Now he wasn’t sure of what he thought. How many of M’s stories were in need of some historical revisionism?
“At first, I wasn’t even sure what was happening,” wrote the complainant. “But later when I got home, it sank in. This was wrong.”
How did you figure it out? Ari thought. Even now, years later, I still have to remind myself that what happened to me, the accident or incident, that it wasn’t my fault.
One of the members of the committee, an art history professor in a baggy neon wool knit sweater that smelled as if it needed washing, raised her hand to say she was already prepared to render judgment. Her first name was Aimee, and Ari resented its unorthodox spelling.
“But we haven’t interviewed the respondent yet,” said Ari.
“I don’t agree with you. As a woman, particularly a woman of color, I don’t believe in being soft on sexual harassment.” Aimee, whose skin was paler than Ari’s, identified as a woman of color because her equally fair-skinned mother had been born in South Africa to white parents. She also made it known that though she was married to a cis man, she identified as bisexual and disabled. In case there was any mistaking the latter, she carried a cane, which she’d covered in shiny silver duct tape, and made a point of loudly dropping on the floor several times during the meeting. Occasionally she used it while walking, or at least, she tapped the ground with it every so often.
“I bought it at Bed, Bath and Beyond,” Aimee told the head of the committee at the beginning of the meeting. “Bed, Bath and Beyond sells the best canes.”
“Excuse me, when did I say I was soft on sexual harassment?” Ari asked.
“Well, I just thought, I mean, when you said . . .” she said. “These are real lives at stake. We have to protect our students.”
“Yes, but when did I say I was soft on sexual harassment?”
“When you disagreed with me, I thought . . .”
“No, you didn’t think,” Ari said. “You assumed.”
Aimee turned to the head of the committee. “I’d like to finish what I was saying without interruption, without being man-splained.”
Ari kept his mouth shut for the rest of the meeting. There had been a time when his queerness had made him an object of fascination, but now queerness was waning out of fashion in academe, having been trumped by disability studies. Anyway, he was glad. He’d never enjoyed being looked at for too long.
In the end, the committee voted three to two to keep the inquiry open until they could hear direct testimony from the claimant and the respondent. The decision surprised Ari since no one said anything openly to indicate that they agreed with him—perhaps they didn’t dare. The art history professor often called people out on Twitter. However, he noticed the two that had voted with Ari gave him sympathetic looks while Aimee was preoccupied with dropping her cane on the floor before getting out of her chair.
The battle-lines were becoming clear: Aimee and another committee member leaning toward lowering the boom, Ari and the other two disposed toward leniency. Though Ari could tip the balance the other way with his vote if he so chose.
A mistake of judgment made on a drunken night. A few fateful minutes. Bad enough to end their marriage. Should it also wreck a man’s life? Ari feared that he already knew the answer, yet could he trust himself to be impartial? Not just because of his relationship with M, but also that other reason, that horrible history Ari carries with him everywhere.
ARI’S ALMOST AT THE END OF his run, and his cheeks are hot pink, burning from the cold air. There’s no one chasing him, though whenever he passes a boy or worse a pack of boys, about the age of fourteen,
